PMP413: The Art of Transformational Coaching with Elena Aguilar

Principal Matters: The School Leader's Podcast with William D. Parker

A quick note to listeners:

Before this week’s interview, Jen Schwanke and Will Parker answered a listener question in a 5-minute response.

The question is: How do I identify the people I can trust to support me or assign positions of management?

Listen in for our response and thank you for doing what matters!

Meet Elena Aguilar:

This week’s podcast is hosted by Dr. Jen Schwanke as she interviews our special guest, Elena Aguilar. Elena Aguilar is a writer, leader, teacher, coach and podcaster. She joins us on our podcast this week to talk about several of her signature topics, including coaching, leadership, emotional resilience, and the powerful skill of listening.

After a brief introduction of Elena and her extensive body of work, Principal Matters listeners will hear Elena kick off the conversation with a summary of what she does, in her own words: “I speak to people’s hearts, and I speak to their minds, and I speak to their hands. And by ‘hands,’ I mean that I give people concrete tools that they can use. I speak to their hearts, and to the longing we all have for connectedness, belonging, purpose, meaning, and for autonomy, trust, and competence. Those are our core human needs.” When these needs are, Elena says, met we thrive individually and we thrive in the community in which we work and live.

Finding Her Purpose:

The root of Elena’s purpose is in her experiences as a young student, a time in which she felt isolated, alienated, and marginalized. Later on, as she awaited graduate school in what she thought was her next career step, she began substitute teaching and found herself energized and inspired by working with students. As a teacher in her own classroom, she committed to creating a learning environment in which every child was accepted and felt they belonged. When Elena transitioned to instructional coaching, she was trained in basic coaching methods but found she had to utilize more humanized and personalized strategies to support teachers when they felt overwhelmed, inadequate, or emotional.

The Importance of Listening:

For principals who either lead instructional coaches in their buildings, or who themselves serve as the instructional coach, this episode of the podcast will support their transformational coaching approach by focusing on the importance of listening— really listening— to get to the root of the opportunity to help. Indeed, this episode highlights Elena’s reflection on the shifts she had to make in her own beliefs about the power and science of emotions as we learn—a helpful takeaway for our listeners. After all, Elena acknowledged, principals and coaches often have a to-do list with countless items to manage, so it can be difficult to focus on the coaching aspect of managing a staff; however, there is great importance and power in thoughtful, compassionate listening and response.

Learning More:

If you’d like to learn more about Elena, you might start with her book! She is the author of eight highly acclaimed texts: The Art of Coaching (2013), The Art of Coaching Teams (2016), Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators (2018), The Onward Workbook (2018), Coaching for Equity (2020), The Art of Coaching Workbook (2020), The PD Book: 7 Habits that Transform Professional Development (2022), and the forthcoming Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching (August 2024). She has also been a frequent contributor to Edutopia, ASCD’s Educational Leadership, and EdWeek Teacher. Furthermore, Elena is the founder and CEO of Bright Morning Consulting, an organization committed to helping individuals and organizations create the conditions for transformation. She has taught tens of thousands of folks how to have conversations that build a more just and equitable world. Listeners can hear Elena demonstrate these conversations on The Bright Morning Podcast.

Staying Connected:

Check out Elena’s website here.

Here is the link to her forthcoming book: Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching as well as the Pre-Order Bonuses listeners can access this summer.

Thank you for doing what matters! ~ Dr. Jen Schwanke

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